Spain – Page 18 – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Zest up your day with toast and marmalade!

It’s that time of year when the house is permeated by the bitter, bright, clean and honeysweet smell of marmalade-in-the-making, as a pan of carefully cut up peels, juice and sugar bubble away enticingly in the kitchen to make this year’s supply of Seville Orange Marmalade. Is anything more guaranteed to wake you up and start your day with a zing than a couple of slices of toast and home-made marmalade?

I first wrote about it here, on this day in 2011. I wrote about it often. But our most memorable marmalade year was two years ago, when I wrote about it again, on almost this day.

Up above your head, in many a Spanish street, are oranges, glowing orbs of colour that brighten the cityscape. And two years ago we were in Valencia, home of the orange. Finding windfalls abandoned in the Turia Gardens, we gathered them and brought them home. What could be better than marmalade made, by you, from oranges you’ve harvested yourselves?

Flashback Friday

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It turns out that my first marmalade post was written on 21st January. Today is the 22nd. I hope this isn’t a hanging offence, in the world of Flashback Friday.

Upstanding craftsmen …

… work high up on the highest spires of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The squares show one of these craftsmen doing his work, almost at the very top. The featured photo gives some idea of how Gaudí’s as yet unfinished cathedral towers high above the city.

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Puppets from a hidden Cádiz corner

To cheer you up on a cold and snowy Saturday (rain later), here are puppets, all from the 1970s and 80s, from one of Cádiz’s best-kept secrets: El Museo del Titere – The Puppet Museum.

Six Word Saturday

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Uptown Málaga

This time last year we were in Málaga. Would you like to have a look at the town centre? Here you are.

This image is a bit up-and-down-and-all-over-the-place. That’s because it’s a reflection in a delivery van’s window.

Monday Window

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Cavalcada de Reis

It’s 5th January. Tonight, one of the three kings (Balthazar? Melchior? Caspar? You can choose) will steal into your house and deliver you presents, as once they did to the infant Jesus. That’s if you live in the Spanish speaking world of course. Before that though, they – or their stand-ins – parade through the streets of every city and town they can find. There’s an eruption of lights, gaiety, colour, as the three kings and a cast of musicians, dancers, and hangers on of every kind process slowly through the streets. Joy and delight is uppermost, whether you attend the no-expense spared slickly presented civic offering, as we did in Barcelona in 2018 and 2019, or enjoy a more low-key event put together by your local community as we did in 2020.

These are not the best photos you’ll ever see of the Cavalcadas, But they might give you a small taste of this upbeat, family focused event. Which sadly, this year, will not be taking place. Of course.

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An Upmarket Grocer

This time last year, we were in Barcelona to spend Reyes – the Festival of the Three Kings, and traditionally a bigger deal than Christmas (Presents! From the kings!) – with Emily’s Catalan family. Here we are outside what’s considered the best grocer’s shop in town, all gussied up for festive shopping.

If you think I’ve muddled up my photos: well, the shop window did that, by reflecting the street scene as well as allowing us to see the goods on offer.

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Monday Window

Organic Geometry.

I am very late in joining Jude’s Photo Challenge #51, but here I am. She invites us to make a collage of images, some of which have strong geometric shapes, others of which are organic in form. I had fun looking back though my collection. And what I soon realised was how hard it is to determine what makes a good photo when those images are so bound up with the memories they represent. I suppose that’s what makes me a snapshot-ist rather than a photographer.

I also found myself choosing photos which were primarily geometric – of buildings and so on, but which were enlivened in some way by more organic forms. So Jude, I may not have quite stuck to your brief (again!) but you’ve made me think (again!)

I like this recent photo of Fountains Abbey, that the severe geometry of the ruined building, its dull grey stone, is enlivened by the informal way the autumn branches frame the scene.

The featured photo shows Brimham Rocks in Yorkshire. Nobody could accuse them of being geometric.

A window in a bad way

Tomorrow, for our regular Tuesday Day Out, we’re taking (another) trip to Cádiz. We’re going to spend time near the sea and pop to a couple of places in town. But today I want to take you instead to Plaza de España. Here is a handsome house in a handsome area. But now it’s down on its uppers. No longer smart, it’s still extremely characterful. I thought it deserved its fifteen minutes of fame.